Accused Chelsea bomber Ahmad Rahimi is not entitled to have his trial moved out of New York on the basis of prejudicial pretrial publicity, a Manhattan federal judge ruled on Monday.

Lawyers for Rahimi, 29, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, had moved to shift his trial to either Washington, D.C., or Vermont, based on a survey showing that massive early publicity demonized Rahimi and nearly 50 percent of potential jurors thought he was guilty.

Manhattan U.S. District Judge Richard Berman said much of the publicity had died down since last year and he believed questioning of prospective jurors could weed out bias.

The judge said 72 percent of prospective jurors in the defense survey reported they could set aside negative views of Rahimi, and noted that a long list of high-profile cases, from terrorists to mob boss John Gotti, were successfully tried in federal court in Manhattan.

ELIZABETH, N.J. (Reuters) - An Afghan-born U.S. citizen accused of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey fired on police in New Jersey to evade arrest, but those crimes fall short of attempted murder as charged, his defense lawyer argued on Monday.

Rahimi also faces a host of federal charges brought by U.S. prosecutors in New York and New Jersey, who have portrayed him as a jihadist who bought bomb components on eBay, praised Osama bind Laden and kept a journal expressing outrage at the U.S. "slaughter" of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

Rahimi, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, appeared in court shackled at the feet and hands while wearing a blue prison uniform, white skullcap and beard. He appeared to be mouthing verses of the Koran while seated at the defense table.

His state-appointed defense attorney, Peter Liguori, has asked Union County Superior Court Judge Regina Caulfield to dismiss all charges, but in oral arguments he focused mostly on getting three attempted murder charges reduced to aggravated assault in the instances where the police officers were unhurt.

Two other officers were wounded in the shootout, which erupted on the streets of Linden, New Jersey, two days after the bombs detonated. Rahimi was shot between eight and 12 times, Liguori said.

The defense lawyer also asked the judge to drop so-called lesser included offenses, arguing that prosecutors "overcharged" his client.[...]The judge said she would issue a written ruling on the defense requests before the end of the month.

ELIZABETH -- A Superior Court judge has rejected accused bomber Ahmad Rahimi's attempt to throw out an indictment charging him with the attempted murder of Linden police officers during a shootout.

Judge Regina Caulfield on Wednesday dismissed the motion from Rahimi's lawyer, Peter Liguori of the Public Defender's Office, contending there was no evidence Rahimi intended to kill the officers in the Sept. 19 shootout.

"Defendant repeatedly shot at all the officers pursuing him on East Elizabeth Avenue. The number of times the defendant fired his gun at the officers supports an inference that the defendant intended to kill them," Caulfield wrote in her 32-page decision.[...]Caulfield's decision disclosed that at one point during the shootout, Linden Officer Peter Hammer saw Rahimi reload his handgun.

"Hammer observed defendant squatting between two cars and reloading his weapon," Caulfield wrote in the decision.

Hammer was wounded early in the gunfight, when Rahimi allegedly fired at the officer's police vehicle, and a bullet went through the windshield. A fragment of the the projectile hit him in the forehead.

As blood streamed down his face, Hammer got out of the vehicle and continued to pursue Rahimi, according to court papers.

Hammer and Padilla, were wounded, with Padilla being shot in the torso moments after he discovered Rahimi. His bullet-proof vest spared him from serious injury, police said.

NEW YORK -- A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday declined to dismiss two of the charges against Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who is accused of bombings in the city's Chelsea neighborhood and in New Jersey in September.

An attorney for Rahimi, of Elizabeth, had argued the indictment's language on counts charging him with using a destructive device during a crime of violence "failed to specify a crime of violence separate from the use of a bomb," and claimed existing case law required prosecutors to specify as such.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman denied the motion to dismiss the two counts, ruling that courts had allowed such charges to stand in similar federal cases, including that of Mohammed Salameh, one of the men convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Berman deferred a ruling on whether or not to block one of the government's proposed expert witnesses from testifying about terrorists and certain Islamic terms mentioned in a letter allegedly written by Rahimi in a journal seized by police.[...]Jury selection for Rahimi's federal trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 2, court records show.

NEW YORK -- A man accused of setting off a pressure cooker bomb in New York City that injured 30 people was a "soldier in a holy war" bent on carrying out a murderous plot with maximum carnage, federal prosecutors said Monday at the start of his trial.

"He designed it. He built it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Crowley said. "He filled it with explosives and deadly shrapnel and he planted it on the street."[...]Rahimi was briefly removed from the courtroom just as his trial opened Monday.

He interrupted proceedings to speak with U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman and was escorted out. He returned after the prosecution's opening statement and apologized for the outburst, telling the judge he hadn't been able to see his wife since his detention.

"It was not my intention to make a scene," he told Berman. He said he's barely seen his three children and hasn't seen his wife once, because she is not approved to go to the detention facility where he's held.

"Why are they preventing me from seeing my wife?" he asked the judge. Berman scolded Rahimi for making a scene and for raising the issue "one minute before we were scheduled to start this trial," but he promised he'd look into the visitation issue.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A jury said Friday it was near consensus but won't deliver a verdict before Monday on charges that a man planted bombs on New York City streets, including one that detonated and injured 30 people last year.

The Manhattan federal jury deliberated just over two hours before telling Judge Richard M. Berman that it wants to return on Monday.[...]The Afghanistan-born Rahimi did not testify. He was arrested two days after the September 2016 attacks following a shootout with police.

In closing arguments, Rahimi's attorney, Sabrina Shroff, urged jurors to acquit Rahimi of three charges that could lead to a mandatory life prison term.

Shroff said there was no proof Rahimi intended for a bomb to explode that was left four blocks away from the bomb that detonated.

A federal jury has convicted a man of planting two bombs on New York City streets, including one that injured 30 people when it detonated.

Jurors in Manhattan on Monday found Ahmad Khan Rahimi, 29, guilty of all charges, including counts of using a weapon of mass destruction and bombing a public place. The Afghanistan-born man living in Elizabeth, New Jersey, faces a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Prosecutors said Rahimi considered himself "a soldier in a holy war against Americans" and was inspired by the Islamic State group and al-Qaida to carry out the attacks on Sept. 17, 2016.

Ahmad Khan Rahimi, still faces state and federal charges in New Jersey related to other explosives and to the shootout that led to his arrest.

Rahimi has been accused of bombing, weapons of mass destruction and related charges in New Jersey federal court for explosives found in Seaside Park and Elizabeth in September 2016. He has not been indicted on or entered a plea to those charges, court records show.

Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, said the prosecutors in those cases will probably consider whether Rahimi's conviction is likely to survive an appeal when they decide whether to move forward with the charges.

New Jersey prosecutors will likely choose whether to move forward with their cases after Rahimi is sentenced in New York. Several of the charges of which Rahimi was convicted carry mandatory life sentences.